if a golfer wanders onto a football pitch while a game is being played, and one of the footballers tries to pass the ball to the golfer, and instead of taking it the golfer is hit painfully in the groin, that is nonetheless not a violent assault
I don't love this analogy, but let's go with it. Presumably you are trying to say that people seeking truth (the golfers) wandered onto a field where a literary game is being played (football) and believed a fiction to be fact (got accidentally injured), but that that isn't the fault of the fiction teller (the football player). In those terms, you were playing football in a public park around people trying to picnic, had no signs or announcement that a game was in progress, no field marked out in any way, and were deliberately wearing normal clothes NOT to look like football clothes. Someone stood up to figure out what was going on and got hit by a pass. In that case, hitting someone with a football WOULD be blameworthy. Not violent assault (that's another version of claiming you're being charged with more than you are to avoid the fact that what you did while minor was still wrong), but you would certainly be asked to, in the future, put up some signs that a game was in progress and demarcate the field in order to keep people from accidentally wandering into the middle of a game. Which is all anyone did in response to your first essay!
In your analogy, it is not the GOLFER who is acting like the entire world is a golf course, but the FOOTBALL players who—again!—are playing WITHOUT postings signs or letting anyone know what they're doing!
But really, this analogy is not helping anything, can we speak plainly?
I get literary devices. But what on earth is the objection to noting that part of what you said was fiction? If not originally, then certainly once it became clear that people were being confused? You are digging in to fight what is such a minor request. Why?
It seems to be related to your claim that the world is a mixture of fact and fiction (I'm basing this off your reply to Yudkowsky's tweet on Substack Notes, which I just saw), but as I said in the piece above, that seems to me a clear deepity. I think that, contrary to what you are claiming, that the ordinary state of human discourse (I again want to invoke Paul Grice here) is saying *true* things. All the other ways of doing things (sarcasm, irony, exaggeration, performative utterances, lies, bullshit, fiction, etc, etc) are deviations from those and are marked out as such (by tone, by carefully managed context (i.e. not what you were doing), explicitly, etc) save for those that are meant to deceive. Symbols are an important part of human thought, but mystification about them is not. Your implication that truth-seeking is a specialized game (golf) is simply wrong, a strange scrap of the shredded garment of postmodernism flapping about in the breeze. And your analogies and parables seem like a way to avoid defending that plainly.
You seem to have a knee-jerk aversion to the project of distinguishing truth and falsehood. But why? Even if we grant they are mixed, is that a good thing? Saying "your entire world is a mix of truth and falsehood", as if that were a *defense*, is like saying the family of a person slain in a war "the entire world is a violent place", or saying to the poor "the poor you shall always have with you" (yes, I know who said that: I'm an atheist Jew, I'm allowed to disagree with him). I grant you that on some topics Yudkowsky comes across as a kook (multiple worlds, cyronics), and on other issues an alarmist (AI), and is part of a slightly weird culture (but then, so are D&D players, readers of 17th century poetry, mathematicians, and all sorts of interesting people). But what about the *basic* project of trying to get the world right sticks in your craw so?
To put it another way: can you really look at the state of the world now, and the history of the world so far this century, and say that the problem is people demarcating truth from falsehood TOO MUCH?
To sum up: what you were being asked was actually both minor and very reasonable. Your response seems to me a knee-jerk reaction to something which, while mixed, is not at all worthy of the reaction you give it. But EVEN GRANTING the problems with the group you singled out, the request remains both minor and knee-jerk: fiction should be labeled.
And if you disagree, can you tell me—clearly, with no golf and no football and no strained analogies—what the harm in doing so would be?
if you can’t understand why i will absolutely never put a little golfer’s content note on my writing explaining which parts are truth and which parts are fiction i guess i’ll have to resort to the explanation i’ve already given, which is that none of it is fiction, everything i write is absolutely true
I certainly can't understand it without you explaining it, which is what you seem to want. I'm having trouble reading an unwillingness to be clear as anything but contempt for those of your audience who you deem to be unsophisticated (me, the people who misread your earlier article, etc). I presume it has *something* to do with it seeming gauche or unsophisticated, but as I said at length in the essay above & again in the comment, I don't think that (very slight) harm works as a justification; and I gave arguments for that, arguments which you haven't responded to. So reiterating that it ought to be clear, when it clearly is not, seems like contempt, the sort of literary snobbery that is somewhat less annoying these days given how unpopular it is in the culture as a whole (and which, to be sure, sits nestled near a love of complex literature that I absolutely share), but still is not, in the parlance of our times, a good look. So yes: since you haven't tried to explain it, save by an incredibly strained analogy, I can't understand; and if you won't deign to speak clearly, I suppose I never well.
And of course the earlier explanation you gave is a lie—unless you want to claim that, since you can't possibly expect it to be believed, it's actually bullshit, or maybe trolling; neither of which is a defense. And not to go all categorical imperative on you, but I do ac tually think that (mostly, all things being equally, etc) lying is wrong. As I said above, it's not a big deal...although your doubling down and redoubling down *on* it makes it seem bigger, at least to me.
I am trying—and fear I may be failing—to be. courteous in the face of what reads as open disdain. If I am failing I apologize. But I wish you would address *something* of what I've said (at great length!) rather than keep refusing to do so.
if a golfer wanders onto a football pitch while a game is being played, and one of the footballers tries to pass the ball to the golfer, and instead of taking it the golfer is hit painfully in the groin, that is nonetheless not a violent assault
I don't love this analogy, but let's go with it. Presumably you are trying to say that people seeking truth (the golfers) wandered onto a field where a literary game is being played (football) and believed a fiction to be fact (got accidentally injured), but that that isn't the fault of the fiction teller (the football player). In those terms, you were playing football in a public park around people trying to picnic, had no signs or announcement that a game was in progress, no field marked out in any way, and were deliberately wearing normal clothes NOT to look like football clothes. Someone stood up to figure out what was going on and got hit by a pass. In that case, hitting someone with a football WOULD be blameworthy. Not violent assault (that's another version of claiming you're being charged with more than you are to avoid the fact that what you did while minor was still wrong), but you would certainly be asked to, in the future, put up some signs that a game was in progress and demarcate the field in order to keep people from accidentally wandering into the middle of a game. Which is all anyone did in response to your first essay!
a golfer believes the entire world is a golf course
In your analogy, it is not the GOLFER who is acting like the entire world is a golf course, but the FOOTBALL players who—again!—are playing WITHOUT postings signs or letting anyone know what they're doing!
But really, this analogy is not helping anything, can we speak plainly?
I get literary devices. But what on earth is the objection to noting that part of what you said was fiction? If not originally, then certainly once it became clear that people were being confused? You are digging in to fight what is such a minor request. Why?
It seems to be related to your claim that the world is a mixture of fact and fiction (I'm basing this off your reply to Yudkowsky's tweet on Substack Notes, which I just saw), but as I said in the piece above, that seems to me a clear deepity. I think that, contrary to what you are claiming, that the ordinary state of human discourse (I again want to invoke Paul Grice here) is saying *true* things. All the other ways of doing things (sarcasm, irony, exaggeration, performative utterances, lies, bullshit, fiction, etc, etc) are deviations from those and are marked out as such (by tone, by carefully managed context (i.e. not what you were doing), explicitly, etc) save for those that are meant to deceive. Symbols are an important part of human thought, but mystification about them is not. Your implication that truth-seeking is a specialized game (golf) is simply wrong, a strange scrap of the shredded garment of postmodernism flapping about in the breeze. And your analogies and parables seem like a way to avoid defending that plainly.
You seem to have a knee-jerk aversion to the project of distinguishing truth and falsehood. But why? Even if we grant they are mixed, is that a good thing? Saying "your entire world is a mix of truth and falsehood", as if that were a *defense*, is like saying the family of a person slain in a war "the entire world is a violent place", or saying to the poor "the poor you shall always have with you" (yes, I know who said that: I'm an atheist Jew, I'm allowed to disagree with him). I grant you that on some topics Yudkowsky comes across as a kook (multiple worlds, cyronics), and on other issues an alarmist (AI), and is part of a slightly weird culture (but then, so are D&D players, readers of 17th century poetry, mathematicians, and all sorts of interesting people). But what about the *basic* project of trying to get the world right sticks in your craw so?
To put it another way: can you really look at the state of the world now, and the history of the world so far this century, and say that the problem is people demarcating truth from falsehood TOO MUCH?
To sum up: what you were being asked was actually both minor and very reasonable. Your response seems to me a knee-jerk reaction to something which, while mixed, is not at all worthy of the reaction you give it. But EVEN GRANTING the problems with the group you singled out, the request remains both minor and knee-jerk: fiction should be labeled.
And if you disagree, can you tell me—clearly, with no golf and no football and no strained analogies—what the harm in doing so would be?
if you can’t understand why i will absolutely never put a little golfer’s content note on my writing explaining which parts are truth and which parts are fiction i guess i’ll have to resort to the explanation i’ve already given, which is that none of it is fiction, everything i write is absolutely true
I certainly can't understand it without you explaining it, which is what you seem to want. I'm having trouble reading an unwillingness to be clear as anything but contempt for those of your audience who you deem to be unsophisticated (me, the people who misread your earlier article, etc). I presume it has *something* to do with it seeming gauche or unsophisticated, but as I said at length in the essay above & again in the comment, I don't think that (very slight) harm works as a justification; and I gave arguments for that, arguments which you haven't responded to. So reiterating that it ought to be clear, when it clearly is not, seems like contempt, the sort of literary snobbery that is somewhat less annoying these days given how unpopular it is in the culture as a whole (and which, to be sure, sits nestled near a love of complex literature that I absolutely share), but still is not, in the parlance of our times, a good look. So yes: since you haven't tried to explain it, save by an incredibly strained analogy, I can't understand; and if you won't deign to speak clearly, I suppose I never well.
And of course the earlier explanation you gave is a lie—unless you want to claim that, since you can't possibly expect it to be believed, it's actually bullshit, or maybe trolling; neither of which is a defense. And not to go all categorical imperative on you, but I do ac tually think that (mostly, all things being equally, etc) lying is wrong. As I said above, it's not a big deal...although your doubling down and redoubling down *on* it makes it seem bigger, at least to me.
I am trying—and fear I may be failing—to be. courteous in the face of what reads as open disdain. If I am failing I apologize. But I wish you would address *something* of what I've said (at great length!) rather than keep refusing to do so.
i think not everything is for everyone and sometimes you have to halt in silence before that which is not for you